Walter A. Maier - Writing Career

Writing Career

Maier was editor of the Walther League Messenger for twenty five years, from 1920 -1945. Once a month this magazine addressed timely issues, secular and religious, within an illustrated format which averaged sixty-four pages in length. Each issue included at least three editorials and articles authored by “W.A.M.” In over nine-hundred essays W.A.M. explored subjects ranging from archaeology, literature and education, music and the fine arts, science and medicine, society and entertainment, business and labor. His object was to provide thinking church people with spiritual insights into current topics, a perspective not addressed in secular periodicals. During the quarter century under Maier as Editor Messenger circulation grew from 7,000 to 80,000, indicating that his target audience appreciated this approach.

When the national Lutheran Hour went off the air in 1931, many listeners wrote to express interest in continuing its message. Its speaker’s first book, The Lutheran Hour, was a collection of broadcast sermons from that first season, intended to alleviate these concerns until a second season could be developed. When the Lutheran Hour broadcast resumed in 1935, the radio public continued to request sermons in printed form. This led to twenty volumes of published W.A.M. sermons during his years as Speaker. When Maier prepared a radio sermon, he dealt with each subject exhaustively. The pica transcripts of his message were typically twenty-two to twenty-four pages long, with far more detail than he could include in a twenty-minute delivery. The complete messages were included in the published collections, which meant that a reader would get fresh information, even on a subject that he had already heard on the radio. The books averaged 350 - 400 pages each and served as resource materials for many Protestant ministers. The following excerpts are illustrative of the national reviews:

…sober, sensible, and fervent talks on religion…that have moved many people to serious thinking…–Boston Globe, January 23, 1932

…a clarity unusual in this day of foggy verbiage. – Dallas Times-Herald, January 24, 1932

…earnest, evangelical, and absolutely sound…–The Christian Century, XLIX, 258

In 1934 Maier published For Better, Not for Worse: A Manuel of Christian Matrimony. W.A.M. honestly believed that no one was more happily married than he, and the intentions of many supposed experts to redefine the institution troubled him. Maier hoped that such a book, based upon a thorough study of the problem, would enable others to also obtain wedded bliss as a reality in their lives. ‘Thorough’ being the keyword, For Better, Not for Worse, included 504 pages of small type in its first edition. The book sold out five printings more quickly than expected, and each time the noted Professor added detail and clarification. By the sixth printing, the matrimonial tome had reached 598 pages in length. The consensus of newspaper and magazine reviews was overwhelmingly favourable, although the work was regarded as academic and “ponderous” by some. Time devoted half of a 1935 article towards its review, and the following excerpt from Christianity Today is indicative of the overall response:

This volume is a needed protest against the pagan, despiritualized conceptions of courtship, marriage and family relations that find such wide-spread expression today….It is more than a protest, however. It sets forth the constructive contributions which Christianity makes to married happiness.

In 1931, Maier wrote the essay, “The Jeffersonian Ideals of Religious Liberty,” which was later published by Concordia. During World War II Maier wrote the well-known Wartime Prayer Guide. The sixty-six page booklet measured less than 3 X 5 inches, and was designed to fit in the uniform pockets of those in service. Several hundred thousand of these were printed by Concordia and distributed to those engaged in the war. Ernst Kaufmann Publishers of New York approached the eminent Professor in 1940 to author the text of a new format of home devotional literature. The work consisted of calendar leaflets for each day of the year with a Scripture text, and a 200-word devotional printed on one side and a prayer and hymn verse on the other. W.A.M. produced twelve years of this series, entitled Day by Day; with sales eventually rising to 50,000 annually. Phonograph record albums entitled Day by Day were also produced, with Maier meditations and hymns by the Lutheran Hour Chorus. The Lutheran Hour offered a tuition-free Correspondence Course entitled, “The Fundamentals of the Christian Faith.” The materials for this study series were also written by Maier – thirty lessons (with test sheets). In addition, Maier published five paperback Lenten devotionals from 1945- 1949.

Culminating Maier’s literary career was the long-researched The Book of Nahum. Published posthumously in 1959 from a manuscript whose text was completed before Maier’s death, The Book of Nahum was a return to Maier’s first love, Semitics. For many years, Maier had worked on this project in his leisure time, often stating his intention to fill his later years with such academic pursuits, once he retired from the limelight. This last work was an examination of the Biblical book of Nahum from the scholar’s perspective. Maier’s main interest lay in the fact that Nahum predicted the fall of the Assyrian empire at around 650 BC, some forty years before the event actually occurred. Many modern higher-critical studies have assumed that Nahum must have been written after the fall of Nineveh in 612 BC, based upon the preconceived bias that prophecy is impossible or unscientific. Maier’s work demonstrated that such predictions were in fact given many years in advance of the fulfillment. His work highlights twenty-two separate details in Nahum’s prophecies which were literally fulfilled in the fall of Nineveh. Prof. George V. Schick finished the bibliography and edited the manuscript for publication.